You've toppled the King. Now What?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Judging by some of the posts here, sometimes high-level adventurer topple a government for all sorts of grievances (usually but not always involving "unfair" taxation on loot and magic items).

But what then? You have gotten rid of the old government, but what will you do with the country now? Do you put a new king in place, run the realm by yourself, or just ignore what happens as long as your grievances are addressed (which could easily lead to a civil war because of the resulting power vaccum)?

Tell your stories from your own campaigns, please.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

Only once has a character toppled a regent; and it was totally accidental. The PC in question was a halfling warlock/wild mage, and the ruler in question was the King of Karrnath, Kaius III.

The short version is, it turns out that using a Rod of Wonder and turning the King ethereal is an effective way of toppling things; especially when the effect made it look like Kaius was disintegrated.

I believe that Karrnath suffered a two year civil war as the various noble houses vied for control of the country.

-TRRW

 

[Nightfall]

If the King gets toppled, that when the demonic cults start to rise up. Hey they like chaos and anarchy.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

We take its stuff!

 

[3d6]

A player once assassinated a king. The council of elders (a sort of cabinet or advisory body) swept into power during the confusion. (The king was the last of his line, so there wasn't even a proper succession battle. No one had a legitimate claim to the throne, and the generals of the army were all on the council.)

 

[gavagai]

My PCs just destroyed the ruling council of a city of elves just last session. I really don't know how things are going to play out, but I hope to impress the feeling on the PCs that rulership is something they do not desire, for all its hard choices and burdens of office. The new council is more or less already made up, and one of the three (NPCs) is a PC puppet (the military guy). The second one is a evil looking guy the PCs always despised (the PCs puppet for that position was destroyed in the fight with the old council), and the third one is currently a mystery (the PCs puppet for that position is unfortunately without an office right now, but she also fell from grace by unheroic actions directly prior to the fight IMHO). Lets see how they fare in the power struggle, but its gonna be a rough ride from here on.

 

[Moonstone Spider]

Depends a lot on what the DM is willing to run for the players, and wether you want to turn the game into a political fest. But DnD isn't really made to handle social politicking well so it's best to find a game more oriented on that genre if you really want to rule your own country. But assuming some sort of theoretical perfect DM, able to handle any situation the players throw at him and rerout his whole game in an instant:

As for what to do, that depends a lot on a huge assortment of situations. If the players are just cheesed off over taxes and are strong enough to kill the king, they should also be strong enough to intimidate him into passing a new adventurer-friendly lawset. This avoids killing King Feeblemind the Unwise, at least until he happens to be away from help and finds something pointy. If the King was evil and needed taking down yes, run the country yourselves at least until you can find a suitable replacement. If you killed the king because you're chaotic and it was fun, then you'll probably enjoy laughing at the succession battles too so sit back, sip some drinks, and observe the civil war.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If you killed the king because you're chaotic and it was fun, then you'll probably enjoy laughing at the succession battles too so sit back, sip some drinks, and observe the civil war.

Depends - if you are chaotic good, you will probably feel obligated to do something to decrease the suffering of the population during the succession crisis...

 

[Sejs]

Judging by some of the posts here, sometimes high-level adventurer topple a government for all sorts of grievances (usually but not always involving "unfair" taxation on loot and magic items).

But what then? You have gotten rid of the old government, but what will you do with the country now? Do you put a new king in place, run the realm by yourself, or just ignore what happens as long as your grievances are addressed (which could easily lead to a civil war because of the resulting power vaccum)?

Tell your stories from your own campaigns, please.

There's usually a big, big difference between bumping off the current head of state and completely removing the entire government infrastructure.

Gutting a govt in whole would take a lot of work, a lot of time, and involve killing or driving off many, many people.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Kill the king, there's going to be someone that's holding their ticket just waiting for their number to come up. And even if there's not, often times those people in power who want the status quo to remain in place will fabricate someone. He was the late king's bastard son. No, honest.

 

[gavagai]

There's usually a big, big difference between bumping off the current head of state and completely removing the entire government infrastructure.

Gutting a govt in whole would take a lot of work, a lot of time, and involve killing or driving off many, many people.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Kill the king, there's going to be someone that's holding their ticket just waiting for their number to come up. And even if there's not, often times those people in power who want the status quo to remain in place will fabricate someone. He was the late king's bastard son. No, honest.

I tend to agree with that. Especially where people are differentiated by levels in what they can do, you simplay have to operate your country again with the same 100 10th level guys who ran the country with the old king. And if you killed the king because of his excessive taxes, chances are you took a little bit away from these guys as well. And killing them all off and replacing them with new ones puts the average level of your leutainants to level 3, and all kinds of bandits and petty warlords come knocking on your door.